As I am usually more interested into older systems to play, I read the first time about a working PlayStation 3 emulator today. You as well? They call themselves the ‘The world’s first open-source Sony PlayStation 3 Emulator for Windows and Linux’, so we are probably not the only ones. So lets have a look at what RPCS3 exactly is and what it can do already. From their ‘About’ page:
The History of RPCS3
RPCS3 is an open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows and Linux. The project began development on May 23rd, 2011 and currently supports modern Vulkan, Direct3D 12 and OpenGL graphic APIs. The emulator is capable of booting and playing hundreds of commercial games. With each and every contribution and donation, more and more games are becoming closer and closer to either booting or full playability.
RPCS3 was founded by programmers DH and Hykem. The developers initially hosted the project on Google Code and eventually moved it to GitHub later in its development. The emulator was first able to successfully boot and run simple homebrew projects and was then later publicly released in June of 2012. Today RPCS3 is dubbed one of the most complex video game console emulators of all time with an endless goal to effectively emulate the Sony PlayStation 3 and all of its aspects.
Requirements
As we all now the PlayStation 3 is quite a powerful piece of hardware hence you need pretty beefy hardware on your PC to emulate it. Lets look into the recommended requirements for RPCS3:
- Windows 7 64-bit or greater / Linux 64-bit
- A modern x64 processor with SSSE3 support
- A GPU that supports OpenGL 4.3 or greater
- Minimum: 4GB of RAM. Recommended: 8GB of RAM or greater
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 redistributable
- Microsoft DirectX End-User Runtime
- PlayStation 3 PS3UPDAT.PUP system software file (get it from Sony directly)
- PlayStation 3 self-dumped games or applications
- Storage requirements will expand depending on installed PlayStation 3 software.
Download and install
Lets grab a copy of RPSC3 and install it. Head over to their Download page and get either the Windows or the Linux binary, depending on your Operating Platform. Download and the run it.
Linux users have to execute the command “sudo chmod a+x ./rpcs3-v0.0.3-2017-08-14-b44f5e5-7621_linux64.AppImage” before running the AppImage.
Once started and in the main windows of RPSC3, install the firmware you downloaded from Sony’s site via “File -> Install Firmware” and selected the just downloaded file PS3UPDAT.PUP. That takes a while and RPSC3 will report back once successfully installed.
Now it is time to start the first title. Either use your own self dumped game or head over to the PD Roms section and download something or the PS3. Download and extract the zip archive.
Run the game
Depending on the file you like to run, lets assume we got a PKG file, you have to install it. Go the RPSC3 select “File -> Install .pkg”, select the downloaded and extract PKG file and let RPSC3 do some magic. It should look similar to this screenshot:
SELF or ELF files can be executed via “File -> Boot SELF/ELF”.
Now it is time to start the PS3 file: Double click (or right click and “Boot”) to start the image. Depending on your machine’s horse power it takes a bit long or even longer to start.
Enjoy.